The Tin Soldiers
by SuperSixOne
Summary: [Black Hawk Down] It is your war and his war and everyone’s war. A war in the desert, in the cities, in the mind.


**Disclaimer:** I can only assume this rather dark character-study never occured, never happened, nor do I insist that the events hold truth in writing them.  
**Notes:** This had been written long ago, but I figured I might as well do something useful with my computer time. By the way, though this was written out as one of the participating pilots during OGS, but it could be whoever.

* * *

Acceptance is pointless. Approval is a waste of time, a hopeless search for understanding that the world will never grant. The world will never accept your memories of the war.

This is a war that has not yet glorified by Hollywood's cameras or the appealing actors that work beneath their capturing gaze; not yet rewritten by brilliant scriptwriters, making your dull experiences worthwhile. Those scriptwriters are not unlike you. There is time on their hands to alter your life just as you should have done for yourself

It is a war that is untainted by fearless broadcast crews and valiant reporters risking it all for a six-minute segment on the eight o'clock news. It is your war and his war and everyone's war. A war in the desert, in the cities, in the mind.

A war that is fought from the planes and the Humvees that brought you to this putrid slaughter. This death is not yours, and for that, you are lucky, but it is for theirs. The enemies, the insurgents, the terrorists.

But maybe you are the terrorist, you and your rifle and your lips that kiss the skin of a son not yet conceived, and maybe those who you believed to be the enemies are the freedom fighters and you are what they say you are. An invader. You are an invader who is not welcome, who does not belong.

He has called you an idiot, a name of which you have truly earned because once again, you have mouthed off, shot up, smoked pot, hired a hooker, forgotten your friends and maybe your own name, didn't follow the rules of engagement. But you are a soldier and ROE means nothing. Are nothing.

Fire only when fired upon? This helicopter flying you across the desert will crash and you will not care because you are a soldier and they do not need to fire first for you to know they live solely to kill you. So you will fire when your trigger finger aches and that hatred in your stomach burns like a cigarette stubbed out on a bare palm.

Resemblance is inescapable, inevitable. God has built you differently than everyone else, but the military has broken you down and created a monster in the shoes that you used to call your own. The military has defied the Lord's conception, defied fate and purpose, and have manufactured yet another destroyer.

Death was a hard subject to linger on, but not a hard task to administer. For that, you wonder if somehow, somewhere deep in the bowels of hell, there is a special place roped off in velvet, reserved for people just like you. The killers who dream of death and grenades and SCUDs and mortal sins on every level, including the ninth.

You have got a rifle in your hands, a helmet long since been comfortable on your head, and you have a one-track mind: kill. The kill was physically exhilarating compared to the many meaningless nights; in a brothel in Africa, a country you cannot and wish not to recall; in your apartment in the States, a city you cannot begin to name.

Seconds and years pass just as the ground passes beneath the helicopter's shadow thrown across the desert floor, you'll sit at your desk and your trigger finger aches like it never has before. You could so easily reach for your rifle and reenter a new war with the simplicity of a waiver, but you turn to a grey keyboard instead. Now, all your fingers ache.

Men, who have long since been forgotten, long since been considered friends, reappear on the shining screen before you. There is one who has never slipped your mind and he has died before his time, before you were ready to let go of what you had, what he had called a lifetime of memories. A clock ticks loudly behind you and you cannot remember the color of his eyes.

The air smells like smoke as your blue eyes meet the blue sky. Sand rains down upon you, all around you, but your blue eyes will not close against the beauty of it all. Skies of azure are turning a hellish black and you pray for gold as your arms rise to the heavens that you can never enter yourself.

Release from this world is necessary, and like resemblance, it is inescapable as you step to the edge. Your boots slide on the loose slate and you do not yet know that you will survive this fall from the war; you do not yet know that this is a battle you will live through. But for now, your war is over and you jump off the cliff.

The point of no return means nothing. Is nothing. You are a soldier and that drop saved you, but it couldn't save him because he slipped off far too soon.


End file.
